Gau threw the spike-chain at him, a glittering arc of mercury cutting air. It made a low whoop as it crossed the space before him. Fixx dropped and spun, ducking under the reach of the weapon, and stepped closer. Gau reversed the move, whipping the chain around his neck and swapping ends. Clever.
The skinny kid was using his off-hand to finger a lanyard around his neck; he wasn’t a threat for the moment. The younger brother was turning, trying to keep on Fixx’s periphery while Gau used the chain to lash him. He was limping where he’d been kicked and it made him slow. Fixx saw him telegraph a move, the lunge coming in his shoulders before he did it. The op swept his hand across the table, catching the cup of disgusting coffee. He tossed it and a steaming streak of fluid spattered on the punk’s face and chest.
The chain thrummed at his head and Fixx shifted. All at once he felt his amusement with this little diversion fade. He snatched the end of Gau s weapon out of the air, ignoring the bite of pain from the cobra-tooth head, and yanked it. Gau didn’t let go quickly enough and was reeled off his feet. Fixx met him with a hammer blow punch that broke ribs and set him on the deck, choking.
Wiping searing hot coffee from his face, the remaining brother was distracted from the dark shape that came at him, coat flaring open in black raptor wings. Fixx used a throat grab to choke a lungful from the kid and then dropped him into a vacant chair. He took the boy’s knife-another gaudy weapon that looked like it came out of an arcade gatchapon game-and snapped it in two.
Skinny had recovered a little and stood blinking owlishly, waving a spade-shaped push dagger. “Ghost you,” he spat, pain making his voice rise. “I’m unstoppable…”
From the corner of his eye, Fixx caught sight of one of the glowing billboards, the trains of gossamer words fading in and out. He paused, turning his Sight on the punk; not the full strength of it, mind, just a little inch’s worth. The go-ganger was heavy with pollution, an oily blue swirling down deep in the wells of his irises. He’d seen the same on people in Newer Orleans, and sometimes, in the daydreams. He could sense it there running through his veins, the indigo taint of Z3N. The boy wilted under the hard-eyed gaze, the dagger drooping.
Fixx mulled over the idea of putting him down; but then in the distance he spotted the floating blobs of CSC security mobiles coming up for a look-see. He left the punk behind and melted into the crowds.
On the giant datascreens Juno came to the end of her set and the adulation from her audience echoed around the mallplex atrium like captured thunder.
Mr Tze had a private elevator set into the corner of the Yuk Lung Tower that faced the city proper and the span of the bay. Through thick armoured glass he could view Hong Kong as he ascended or descended the gleaming flanks of the corporate skyscraper. He liked to take a place just an inch from the bowed window; there, it seemed as if he were some powerful ghost-lord coming down from heaven, the city rising up to meet him in supplication. Such a conceit amused him, it brought the semblance of a smile to the hard lines of his warrior face.
Tze allowed no one to speak during the elevator journeys. He made it a point of law that there be silence for the short duration, keeping the moment as an oasis of tranquillity wherein he could marshal his thoughts. The Masks, as inventive as ever, would communicate with one another via sign language if the matter required it. Behind him now, Deer Child and Blue Snake, one of the female guardians, discussed the CEO’s security protocols with efficient twists of finger and arm motions. There were many things that clamoured for his attention, matters pressing as diverse as the effects of an arctic earthquake on YLHI’s seabed oilrigs to the issue of a local triad leader who was not showing the proper level of deference. But he found it hard to dwell on such trivia, not when the Great Pattern was coming together.
If he concentrated hard enough on it, Tze could find a small knot of boyish anticipation hiding the depths of his soul, past his careful, most serious persona. After so long spent in service to the core goal of the Cabal, at last he would see it come to its fruition. The idea was as breathtaking now as it had been when he first understood the scope of it, when the members had taken that first meeting in the ruins of a small town in the Gobi Desert. In that place, as they walked about inside hazmat suits turning over glassy fulgurites fused from sand, finding the bodies of couples merged into dead amalgams of flesh, Tze had been touched by truth. The knowing had set him free.
There, they picked through the remains of the failed summoning, they read the cantrips and reviewed the splinters of tape that had not been obliterated in the thermal bloom. They came to understand the mistakes that had been made. Tze, in particular, had embraced the challenge with the fresh, untrammelled zeal of a convert. It was nothing less than the key to the mastery of the human soul that was being offered to them. It dwarfed the dreams of empire that Tze nursed. The Great Ones offered not just the earthly powers of prowess, of wealth and influence-those Tze had earned already-but more. The road marked out by the King of Rapture was the gateway to lordship over the most primal of human emotions; desire.
Tze felt that now, a need so great it made his blood ache. It was sweet, a perfect salve for the ills that had coloured his existence. Oh, his had not been a life of tragic circumstances and terrible hardship, far from it. Tze had grown to manhood in the bosom of a moneyed mainland clan, fed and educated with the finest that could be bought. It was there he had come to understand the full might of intemperance, that the majesty of a man flowed not just from the breadth of his appetites, but also from the extremes to which he would be willing to take them. It was only on the edges of what lesser types called “morality”, beyond abstract, foolish concepts like “ethics” where a man could honestly know himself. And in that knowing would come mastery, not just of the self, but of others. All others.
He had no words for it then, in the days when they called him Black Tze behind his back, and scattered like birds when he came to take prey. But it made him strong; and eventually Tze came into the orbit of people who could open the way to him. The Gates of Sensation unlocked to his touch, and the ennui that had threatened to engulf him was wiped away. So much had changed since then. Tze’s marriage to the Cabal was a second birth, a gift giving that he would soon repay with the lives of the world.
He pressed his hands to the window. It was fitting that it would begin here, birthing from the skies above this city. When it was done, when Hong Kong was ablaze as New Gomorrah, he would be the one to ride the Jade Dragon’s back and take the first succulent taste of the world’s fresh terror.
The light outside the lift vanished as the elevator dropped past the lobby atrium and through the basement sublevels. Tze caught a warped glimpse of his own face in the darkness beyond the glass and paused to wipe a thin line of drool from the corner of his mouth with a silk handkerchief.
With a chime, the lift doors opened and the Masks moved with him into the underground car park. Tze took three steps from the elevator before he stopped abruptly. “Intruder…”
It was only when he hid himself in the back of the delivery truck that Ko realised Feng wasn’t with him. He threw a worried glance up at the gap beneath the roller door and saw the swordsman as the vehicle pulled from the kerb. Feng turned his face away, like he was sad and angry all at once.
For a moment Ko was upset, but then he mashed that feeling down with the hammer of his churning rage. One thought of Nikita beneath the webs of life-support sensors and he was high with fury The anger had shifted and changed since he left the hospital. At first impotent and directionless, the call from the salaryman had provided him with sudden, perfect clarity. Now Ko was aimed like a laser, he had a name to give form to his pain. This Mr Tze, this phantom creep with his cashwhore flunkies, he was where the blame lay. That the guy on the phone from the expressway might have been playing him, maybe lying to Ko to get him jumping through hoops, that was something that the go-ganger never gave a moment to consider. This was not a matter of careful reflection and thought. Ko was a loosed missile, homing in on a target. He could not see past the moment of his rage’s release, destruction looming large in his mind. The thief had never felt the urge to commit murder so strongly in his entire life. Every other consideration was secondary to that.